New Ride Debuts at World’s ‘Most Insane’ Water Park

Once considered the world’s "most insane" water park, Action Park in Vernon, New Jersey, is now promising more thrills with none of the spills. On Thursday, the once-notorious park debuted its biggest attraction ever, a 100-foot-high water slide called Zero-G that plunges riders through a translucent flume and through two 360-degree (horizontal) loops.

The ride is expected to offer an intense but sane counterpoint to the park’s infamous past. Operating from 1978 to 1996, the park’s original collection of physics-defying rides caused so many injuries — and six deaths — that the place earned nicknames including “Traction Park” and “Class Action Park,” NJ.com reports. “It was bigger, scarier and more insane than any amusement park I’d ever been to,” said Seth Porges, a journalist and entrepreneur who visited the park as a child and eventually co-produced a documentary about its longstanding hold on its fans. As for Zero-G and the park’s other recent additions, Porges welcomes them as evidence of the “re-Action Park-ifying” of a special place: “They’re bringing the action back.”